Papua New Guinea\u2019s leader has dismissed Joe Biden\u2019s unlikely suggestion that his uncle was eaten by cannibals there as \u201cloose\u201d talk that does not reflect the US president\u2019s feelings for the country. \u201cSometimes you have loose moments,\u201d James Marape said in an interview after Biden\u2019s contentious remarks, adding that the relationship was stronger than \u201cone blurry moment\u201d. Biden said last week that his uncle Ambrose Finnegan was shot down over the Pacific nation during World War II, suggesting his body was never found because \u201cthere were a lot of cannibals\u201d in the area. \u201cI\u2019ve met him on four occasions, until today, and on every occasion he\u2019s always had warm regards for Papua New Guinea,\u201d Marape said. \u201cNever in those moments (has) he spoke of PNG as cannibals,\u201d he added. US defence records showed Finnegan\u2019s courier flight was actually \u201cforced to ditch in the ocean\u201d off the island\u2019s coast \u201cfor unknown reasons\u201d. Finnegan\u2019s aircraft hit the water hard and three crew members failed to emerge, while one survived and was rescued by a passing barge, the official Defence POW\/MIA Accounting agency said on its website. A search the next day found \u201cno trace\u201d of the missing crew, the agency said, and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed Finnegan died when he \u201ccrashed in the Pacific\u201d, not over land. Biden\u2019s cannibalism quip comes on the back of a string of recent gaffes. Earlier this year, Biden regaled an audience with an anecdote about meeting former German chancellor Helmut Kohl in 2021 \u2014 who at that point had been dead for four years. Days earlier he appeared to confuse long-dead French president Francois Mitterrand with current leader Emmanuel Macron. Critics \u2014 including his Republican rival Donald Trump, himself 77 \u2014 have questioned whether the 81-year-old is sharp enough to withstand another gruelling term in office. Biden has repeatedly asserted there are no problems with his memory or cognition. \u2018The truth\u2019Historically, cannibalism has been documented among a small number of tribes in remote parts of Papua New Guinea. But the nation has for decades tried to shed outdated tropes that paint it as a wild nation full of savagery. \u201cThere are much, much [\u2026] deeper values in our relationship than one statement, one word, one punchline,\u201d Marape said. He urged Biden and the White House to instead focus on clearing up the unexploded ordnance that still litters Papua New Guinea today. In a separate statement on Sunday evening, Marape said the people of Papua New Guinea \u201clive with the fear\u201d of being killed by bombs left over from the Second World War. \u201cI urge President Biden to get the White House to look into cleaning up these remains of WWII so the truth about missing servicemen like Ambrose Finnegan can be put to rest,\u201d he said. In a single bomb disposal expedition on the island of Bougainville in 2014, troops from Australia and the United States destroyed 16 tonnes of wartime munitions. The US government\u2019s own travel advisory for Papua New Guinea cites unexploded ordnance as one of the main dangers in remote areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Papua New Guinea\u2019s leader has dismissed Joe Biden\u2019s unlikely suggestion that his uncle was eaten by cannibals there as \u201cloose\u201d talk that does not reflect…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16406,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}